That would explain why Jennifer Jason Leigh's Single White Female copied her roommate's haircut and tried to run off her boyfriend when they decided to move out (attacking people with stiletto heels, on the other hand, is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.) Basically, you feel hopeless and lost, you look to other people for a sense of belonging, and you get scared shitless and act out at the slightest indication that they might take their affection away. So there was a little more going on there behind all the bunny-boiling.

Well, imagine that, only worse. And you never grow out of it.

So people who have BPD tend to go through relationships like the tissues they go through over the course of those relationships, and I'm no exception. I fall in love whenever I look at someone for too long, but I've always been on the lookout for the next person since (according to my stupid brain), he will inevitably leave me. It becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, I had only been dating one guy for six weeks when I informed him that I was in love with him and we were meant for each other. After that understandably freaked him out a bit, I went into panic mode and found another guy within 36 hours. I had about four "serious" relationships that summer. You see, staying single is not an option.

That's the name of the go-to book about borderline personality disorder, because that's more or less our constant emotional state. The clinical terms are "idealization and devaluation," but what that means in normal person language is that someone is the best person in the world, until they're the worst person in the world -- but even then, you still intensely desire his or her attention.

Do you remember the relationships you had in your early teens, when the hormones first started pumping and absolutely everything was HUGE and DRAMATIC? One day, you're madly in love with a person or she's your best friend, but as soon as she does anything to make you feel even slightly insecure, she's suddenly the subject of pages of bleak poetry in your diary? Do you remember the constant anxiety and self-doubt, the fear that if you went even one day without talking to him, it meant he didn't like you anymore?

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Well, imagine that, only worse. And you never grow out of it.

So people who have BPD tend to go through relationships like the tissues they go through over the course of those relationships, and I'm no exception. I fall in love whenever I look at someone for too long, but I've always been on the lookout for the next person since (according to my stupid brain), he will inevitably leave me. It becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, I had only been dating one guy for six weeks when I informed him that I was in love with him and we were meant for each other. After that understandably freaked him out a bit, I went into panic mode and found another guy within 36 hours. I had about four "serious" relationships that summer. You see, staying single is not an option.

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I can feel like the only way to protect myself is to reject people before they reject me, even if they weren't thinking about rejecting me at all. Maybe they were just thinking that I could stand to take the trash out more often, or that they'd like some time alone to play video games and blow off steam. But everything feels like a personal denunciation -- remember, this is all coming from the personal assumption that I'm worthless on my own. Then I become convinced that their bad moods are my fault and I have to fix it before they send me away, which just irritates them more because no, really, they just want to shoot some terrorist pixels.

It's basically fight or flight, if your version of fighting would be grossly ineffective in most street brawls, since it mainly involves smothering people with your love.

Harvard professor Judith Herman even believes that BPD may not exist at all, suggesting that it's actually a form of PTSD that has turned into a label to be slapped on troubled women because it fits so neatly into our ideas about them, conveniently allowing them to dismiss us as "born bad." Add the fact that most people diagnosed with BPD have experienced severe trauma to the list of things that are probably not coincidences.

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This tendency to overdiagnose women can be really harmful, especially if you do suffer from a different disorder but got the borderline label slapped on your bitch ass. My mother is schizophrenic (which is diagnosed more often in men), but she was originally misdiagnosed as borderline, which meant she went without proper treatment for way too long. Especially because ...

I take medication to reduce anxiety, depression, and mood swings, but there is no pill for "clinically clingy." A few forms of therapy have shown promise, particular dialectical behavior therapy, but good luck finding a therapist trained in it. I've been on a waiting list for six months with another four or so to go, and I just have to hope my life doesn't fall apart in the meantime. And I'm one of the lucky ones, considering that therapy is expensive, and people with mental health issues aren't exactly the most employable (note that every mentally ill person eventually has to deal with the fact that a pill is a lot cheaper than a person).

I sure don't feel lucky a lot of the time, though. The tiniest things can be landmines. Once I tried paying for my groceries with a type of credit card the store didn't accept, and the cashier informed me in a tone of voice I heard as hostile. By the time I got to my car, I was in tears and ended up sobbing in my car for an hour before I drove home. I had to pretty much close down my business because I was having panic attacks every time I went in. I just have to try to take a buddy everywhere I go and otherwise avoid people as much as possible so I don't have a breakdown over some little fucking thing.

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When I'm alone, I'm left to my own devices to come up with coping mechanisms. Keeping myself on a routine of eating, sleeping, and showering regularly does wonders. That might seem weird, but you'd be surprised how fast these things go down the shithole when you start to slip out of control, which makes you feel even more out of control. When I'm dealing with negative emotions, it helps to find something to distract myself, like focusing on song lyrics playing over the loudspeakers in the grocery store. It also helps to force myself to challenge my irrational thought patterns. If I can't stop thinking, "You're so fucking useless, you're such a burden on everyone, the world would be better off without you," I make a conscious effort to take a step back from the thought and say to myself, "Well, I'm not useless because I did all the laundry this morning, and my husband would be sad if I died."

It's a process of fumbling around and figuring out what works. It hasn't always been productive -- I've gotten relief by cutting myself, and I have a bitch of a smoking habit because sometimes a cigarette is the only thing that helps. With no practical treatment options, people who have BPD are at a sky-high risk for substance abuse, according to the Institute of Duh at No Fucking Wonder University. The prognosis is pretty bleak. And it's not helped by the fact that ...